ShelfScore

Is this phrase a door or a wall?

Check one YouTube search phrase before it goes in your title. Seven steps, one search page, and a plain answer at the end: build on it, keep looking, or drop it.

DOORSmall channels like yours get in and get watched. Put it first in your title.
KEEP LOOKINGNot this one. It can be a second phrase; check the next one.
DROPWalled off, dead, or people want something else. Keep it out of your title.

Think of YouTube as a shop. Every search phrase is a shelf. A big search number doesn't mean your video can get space on it: big channels may own the whole shelf, or the shelf may be empty because nobody comes. This check reads the shelf itself, the first 12 videos on its search page, and tells you which it is.

Your phrase

The exact words you'd put at the start of your title. Word order matters.

How many subscribers does your channel have?

1Demand

Look the phrase up in a keyword tool (vidIQ's free plan works: Keywords, type the exact phrase, note Search volume). Also look up its parent (the phrase with the extra words taken off: "cheap dinner ideas" → "cheap dinner") and one or two closer versions (the phrase plus a word that fits: "for beginners", "easy"). No tool? Tick the box. Everything else still works.

Is the tool guessing? Does your phrase show almost the same number as its parent, while the closer versions show about 0?

Did a closer version show more searches than your phrase?

2One search page

Open YouTube in a private or incognito window (on a phone: Chrome incognito at m.youtube.com). Search the exact phrase. Press Filters: Type Video, and the Duration your video falls in (12 minutes: the middle one; 30 minutes or more: the longest; a Short: the shortest). Leave sort on Relevance. Read the first 12 videos. Each of the 12 places is a seat. Steps 3 to 6 all come from this one page. Open the channels you don't recognise to see their subscribers and what else they post.

3Who owns the shelf?

Sort the 12 channels into big and small. Small means about your size up to a few times your size: a 600-subscriber channel's "small" is a few thousand, not 50,000. (If you're not sure, most pages' small ones are under about 50,000.)

4Are the small channels alive?

For each small channel on the page, open its video and type its views and the exact upload date. The page works out views per day. A small channel with a handful of views a day on an old video is a corpse: the shelf is easy because nobody comes. You need at least one clearly alive small channel.

5Does it fit?

Format: does your kind of video win here, or even appear? Judge each video by its title, thumbnail and channel, never the title alone.

Wish: look at the most-viewed videos on the page. Do the people searching want what you make?

6How new?

Are uploads from this year getting seated on the page and getting views?

7Try to kill it

Before you call anything a door, try once to knock it down.

Does the phrase also mean something else (another game, a product, a brand, a different hobby)?

Is there a meme or joke genre on it?

Is it seasonal (a holiday, a time of year)?

This is the first step of ShelfScore

ShelfScore is the method we use on our own YouTube channels to choose the words a video lives on. On one of our sleep-sounds channels, videos titled this way got about four times the daily impressions of the channel's earlier videos. The full kit takes you past one phrase: where your next phrases come from when this one isn't a door, how to write the title, description and tags around a door, how to read your Studio, Shorts, and the 7-day check that tells you if it worked.

Get the ShelfScore Kit, $49

Works with any AI chat, free plans included. Rather have us do it for your channel? Write to us and say which channel.

Nothing you type leaves this page: there's no sign-in and nothing is sent or saved. The verdict reads what you tell it from the search page; it can't see YouTube for you, and no check can promise views.